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Show BY PATH AND TRAIL. 221 takes in the Gila river, and from there the flow sweeps on 1( JO miles to the Gulf of California. Possibly the most ambitious attempt at irrigation of arid lands ever undertaken by private enterprise was that of the California Development Company, which promised its shareholders to irrigate, by gravity, from the Colorado river, 800,000 acres of desert land, one-fourth of which belongs to Mexico. The company was capitalized at $ 1,250,000. This company began opera tions in April, 1897, and in six years villages and towns sprang into life, and where a few years ago there was a desert, there are now fertile farms, orange and lime groves and comfortable homes, occupied by thousands of industrious and contented people. A canal, called the Alamo, was dredged from the Colorado through the sand lands, and from this canal, by auxiliary ditches, was fur nished water for irrigating the farms. When the Colorado river was low, the canal was slug gish in its flow, the channel and subsidiary trenches filled with silt, and the settlers became clamorous. Then the company opened a second intake, known as the Imperial, which connected the Colorado with the Alamo canal. Here, and now, is where the trouble begins. Neither suf ficiently strong nor perfected headgates, wing- dams or bulkheads were constructed, and, when, in the spring of 1903, the Colorado, swollen from mountain and tributary streams, came rushing to the sea, it swept the artificial works aside and entered upon its present career of de vastation. About this time a series of sharp, quick and rotary earthquakes rocked the country and opened a gash in the Colorado above the Imperial weir. From this open ing the waters poured into what is now known as the |